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I have a friend who rather famously says she will not cook anything that takes longer to make than it does to eat. Which, of course, I say is ridiculous: what does that leave you eating — Jell-O and cheese and crackers?

Still, there is something to be said for recipes that have a favourable effort-to-outcome ratio. This frozen cake, from Nigella Lawson’s gorgeous new book Nigellissima, has a great ratio: it’s a one or two on effort and a 10 on taste.

I made it for a friend’s birthday dinner and was honestly amazed at how great it tasted and spectacular it looked even though it took all of maybe 20 minutes to put together (plus eight hours in the freezer.)

Lawson herself calls it “one of the world’s easiest and most delicious desserts” and says she found the recipe in “a rather fabulous book” by chef and culinary philosopher Gioacchino Scogna­miglio called Il Chichibio.

For the cake and the sauce, I used part of a bar of dark, bittersweet Callebaut chocolate from Ottawa Bagelshop and Deli on Wellington West. You can also buy baking bars of bittersweet chocolate at the new Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut on Dalhousie Street (same Belgian Callebaut chocolate-making ancestors, but now made by different chocolate companies.)

I searched a bit around town before I finally found some meringue cookies, at Thyme & Again, on Wellington West near Holland. They’re sold in two-ounce bags of 10 cookies (for $7.50) that seemed to be plenty to pack into the whipped cream (though Nigella calls for 4 ounces of meringues.) The meringues for sale this week at Thyme & Again are a mix of raspberry ones and mango ones that would be perfect in this dish.

Once I put the mixture into my loaf pan, I still had a bit of space and some special ice cream on hand (a pint of Adriana’s white chocolate ice cream from the Wellington Gastropub, $9), so I made another layer, spreading the softened ice cream over the whipped-cream-meringue layer, but this is certainly not necessary. If you wanted to make this cake into a special Easter dinner dessert, though, you could consider adding a layer of lemon or dark chocolate ice cream or raspberry sorbet and garnishing with mint leaves.

Meringue Gelato Cake with Chocolate Sauce

Makes: 6 to 8 servings

1¼ cups (300 mL) whipping cream

1 ounce (25 g) bittersweet chocolate (min. 62% cocoa solids)

1 tbsp (15 mL) coffee or chocolate liqueur or rum

2 ounces (50 g) store-bought meringue cookies

To serve (optional):

1 batch chocolate sauce (recipe at ottawacitizen.com/ottawadish)

8 ounces (200 g) fresh raspberries

1. Line a 9-inch-by-5-inch (23-by-12-cm) loaf pan with plastic wrap, making sure you have enough overhand to cover the top later.

2. Whip the cream until thick but still soft.

3. Chop the chocolate very finely so that you have a pile of dark splinters, and fold them into the cream, along with the liqueur.

4. Now, using brute force, crumble the meringue cookies and fold these in too.

5. Pack this mixture into the prepared loaf pan, pressing down with a spatula as you go, and bring the plastic wrap up and over to seal the top, then get out more plastic wrap to wrap around the whole pan. Freeze until solid, which should about 8 hours, or overnight.

6. To serve, unwrap the outer layer of plastic wrap, then unpeel the top and use these bits of long overhanging wrap to lift out the ice-cream brick. Unwrap and unmould it onto a board and cut the frozen meringue cake into slabs to serve. Optional: zigzag a little warm chocolate sauce over each slice and sprinkle a few raspberries on each plate.

Chocolate Sauce

If this sauce cools and gets too thick, you can whisk in a couple of tablespoons of hot espresso.

2. Put over a gentle heat and whisk as the chocolate melts, taking the pan off the heat once the chocolate is almost all melted. If the mixture gets too hot, the chocolate will seize, whereas it will happily continue melting in the warm cream off the heat.

3. Add the liqueur, still off the heat, and whisk again to amalgamate the sauce completely. Pour into a pitcher, whisking every now and again until it cools to the desired temperature.

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